


remembrance

by TwoMenAndAGuava (drakkynfyre47)



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Drinking Games, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 05:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11593905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakkynfyre47/pseuds/TwoMenAndAGuava
Summary: Drinking games, and memories.





	remembrance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GeekyGirlfriends](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeekyGirlfriends/gifts).



Kira really, really, _really_ hates kanar.

This isn’t news to her, really, but it’s always nice to have a confirmation. But it’s the only thing alcoholic in this dismal place, so there’s nothing else for it but to pinch her nose and drink it fast. It’s thick and sweet and tastes like fish, and it smells. “How do you stand this stuff?” she asks, wrinkling her nose.

“Tastes good,” Damar informs her.

“Like home,” Garak adds.

She quiets, after that, because she knows what it’s like to have to hold onto your culture with two hands after isolation.

“Anyway,” Damar says, forcing them out of the melancholy atmosphere they’ve settled into, “we should play a game. Drinking’s always more fun when you’re playing a drinking game.”

“Suggestions?” Garak asks skeptically.

“Never have I ever,” Kira says. “That’s a good one. Jadzia -” Her voice catches a little. “Jadzia was fond of that one.”

“Never have I ever?” Damar asks, taking another swallow.

“Never have I ever… fired a Bajoran phaser,” Garak says. “And if you have, you have to drink.”

Kira holds out her hand for the bottle. Damar passes it over, and she tipped the bottle back. “Never have I ever lied about my age,” she says, and passes the bottle straight to Garak without even checking to see if he would own up to it.

Garak frowns, but drinks, then offers Damar the bottle. He drinks as well, which honestly doesn’t surprise Kira. 

“Never have I ever shot a Cardassian on purpose,” Damar says, looking at Garak slantwise. “As far as I remember.”

Kira grabs the bottle from him, takes a long drink, and hands it over to Garak. “Never have I ever…”

“My turn,” Garak says, shaking a finger at her, admonishing. “Never have I ever fallen asleep on duty.”

“Ugh,” Damar says, but holds out his hand for the bottle. “Are you targeting me?”

“No,” Garak says, at the same time Kira says “Yes.”

Damar folds his arms. “I want to pick the next game,” he warns.

“Fine,” Kira says. “Never have I ever betrayed my people.”

They’re all quiet, Kira’s chin lifted defiantly, Damar’s fists clenching and unclenching, Garak’s eyes half-lidded as he watches to see how this will play out.

“My turn to pick the game,” Damar says finally, after several seconds of tense silence. “Flip, sip, or strip. Let’s go.” He pulls a coin from his pocket, shows them the two sides. “Heads.”

He flips the coin, watches as it spins down to settle in the dust of the basement floor, tails up. “I’ll sip,” he says, and Kira watches him swallow, tipping his head back. 

He passes her the coin, and she flips it. “Tails,” she calls, and smirks at Damar as she shows them the tails side facing up. She slips it over for Garak’s turn, and watches him inspect the coin. 

“Tails,” he says. It lands heads, and he somewhat reluctantly pulls off his boots. “I assume this is what’s meant by strip?” he asks, sending an inquiring gaze in Damar’s direction. 

Damar confirms this with a nod, then takes his own turn. “One more rule,” he says. “You can’t do the same action more than twice in a row.”

They keep drinking, keep talking, keep revealing more and more of themselves to each other.

“We’re going to die, you know,” Kira says. She tends to be a serious drunk, focussing too much on the negatives. “We are going to die and I am going to sacrifice my life to save the damn Cardies. I can’t believe that.”

“That’s not a nice word,” Damar says.

“If I were a betting man,” Garak starts, then pauses. “If I were a betting man, I’d place odds on one of us surviving.”

“That makes one of us,” Damar mutters. “I’m with Kira. We’re all going to die and it’s going to be wonderful.” 

“Never have I ever tried to kill myself,” Kira mumbles. 

“Gimme,” Damar says, reaching for the bottle as Garak takes a long drink. “Here. Yeah, I tried a couple times.”

“Things were bad on the station for a while,” Garak admits, passing the bottle over.

“I volunteered for suicide missions,” Kira confesses, intercepting the bottle and taking a swallow.

“Cheers,” Damar smiles grimly. “To suicide missions.”

“Suicide missions,” Kira and Garak echo. 

They fall asleep not ten minutes later, wrapped around each other and the near-empty fourth bottle of kanar. 

-

It becomes an anniversary tradition, of sorts. Kira heads to Quark’s every year, the night before the final battle for Cardassia had taken place. She sits, and orders kanar, and pinches her nose shut and drinks it down, toasting Damar’s memory and suicide missions in turn. Getting blind drunk isn’t something she’s terribly proud of, but really, what better way to remember Damar than to do what he’d loved best?

By the time she’s halfway through the bottle, she’s gotten past the mourning and started remembering those long nights in the basement of Enabran Tain’s old house. She remembers the sharing, the late-night confessions, the stupid games they’d played. She misses Damar, in a bizarre way, knowing that someone she’d shared things with was dead, even if she hadn’t loved him in the way she’d loved her Bajoran resistance comrades in arms. 

-

There’s not a lot of luxuries on Cardassia any more. Garak doesn’t mind, much, because at least it’s temperate and he doesn’t have to worry about how cold it’ll get at night, or about the heat controls going haywire. What he does miss, on the nights when he’s remembering Kira and Damar, is kanar. It has never been his drink of choice, but it was Damar’s and that’s worth something to him even now. 

He finds a miraculously unbroken bottle in the wreckage of a house. It’s been leaking a little from the cork, but most of the alcohol is still inside. Garak saves it for a long night, one where he knows he’ll need the comfort of intoxication to save himself a sleepless night. 

He sketches, sometimes, with a stick in the mud, or on one of the large flat stones. Usually it’s clothing, some new design or something to send back to Julian. But tonight feels different, feels like a portraiture night. So he draws, and before he realizes what he’s done he’s outlined the line of Damar’s throat, head thrown back as he laughed.

He’ll send it to Kira when he’s done.


End file.
